Overview:
Enabling Novel Designs for Organic Food Waste Abatement by Student Technologists and Entrepreneurs = E.N.D.O.F.W.A.S.T.E.
A sustainable approach to one of the largest issues in the food industry: food waste. The EOW Project is a year-long collaboration between students, faculty, and industry partners.
Objective:
Promote student-driven endeavors to develop value-added food products utilizing solid organic residues from commercial organic fruit and vegetable processing.
Scope:
An interdisciplinary student team comprised of food science, engineering, and business students, with guidance from faculty and industry experts, will formulate food products from processing residues, run sensory panels, model production scale- up, and determine minimum selling price for the product if commercialized.
Vision:
- Demonstrate the benefits of student-led collaborative research between UC Davis and the food and beverage processing industry
- Expand research to develop value-added coproducts from industrial food and beverage processing residues.
- Act as a catalyst to establish a Food Waste Center at UC Davis.
Milestones:
- Measure/characterize waste streams at study site
- Develop 3 food products prepared from selected high-quality wastes streams
- Products achieve overall acceptability score of >6 (hedonic scale) from a sensory panel
- Meet cost target of <$2/100 grams to produce
- Track production hours per unit
- Monitor waste averted